Wastelands
by danniisupernova
Summary: Nothing good could ever happen here. RogueWolverine post X3
1. Chevelle

_Unreal City,  
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,  
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,  
I had not thought death had undone so many,  
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,  
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet._

-T.S. Eliot _The Waste Land_

The town is practically empty. Less then a hundred people in the town proper, working at the gas station and the Days Inn and the McDonalds. A few more in the outlying farms. Right on the I-5, the only people who would ever come through Chevelle ( a pretty name for a shitty little town) are travellers: big families on road trips to San Diego or newlyweds who are on their way to a honeymoon in Big Sur, splurging on the hotel but not the travel. Then there are the drifters. They range from all ages, some black, some white, some clean, some not. But only the locals know about all of this. They practically count the people to keep food on the table. Chevelle isn't a prosperous or a happy place. People joke sometimes about dying just to have something to do in this, a shitty town with a pretty name, in the no-where between Los Angeles and Lake Castaic.

Nothing good could ever happen here.

****  
Suzie's terrified. She's pressed face-first against a white tile bathroom wall, the information "Tris, 553 346 7698" proclaiming some other girl's jealousy and hate. The man behind her smells like beef jerky and sweat. He's bigger then her and no matter how much she wriggles, she can't get away. Tears are streaking down her face. She knows what's going to happen. After he's done raping her from behind like this, he'll probably cut her throat and throw her into a ditch or just leave her here in the bathroom of a Shell station, to be found by some fat, Midwestern woman and maybe even her little kid too. 'Hey, just one more person to get fucked up on account of this,' she thinks cynically.

The door slams.

"What the fuck!" Suzie hears a woman yell. She's got a hick accent, but hopefully she's not stupid. "Get out of here bitch, I'm busy!" The fucker shouts at her, trying to sound tough. Suzie just barely sees the dark shape that flies over and is suddenly on top of the him. His grip loosens and she struggles to get away from him. His hand falls, sliding down her body and gripping to the waistband of her blue shorts. She turns her head to see his face. He's a big blonde asshole with spikey hair. He looks like a guy who used to play football at her high school.

He looks like he's dying. His eyes are bulging out and so are all the veins in him and she realizes that whoever it is that saved her _is_ killing him. 'Good!' she thinks visciously. 'I hope it hurts! I hope it hurts like hell!' His face falls flat onto the tiles and his eyes are all bulged out and his tongue is hanging out. The girl is sitting on his back, her bare hands pressed to his neck. She's got this punk hairdo with a big white streak in her hair and a big coat on even though it's May.

Suzie rushes towards her. "Oh my God, thank you, thank you so much, you-" The girl looks at her, angry. "You should get out of here." Suzie looks at her, suddenly noticing that she doesn't have a weapon. That she's just been touching the fucker. And there's no blood. She backs slowly towards the door. She runs to her car and guns it, speeding out to her mother's on the edge of town. 'A mutant,' she thinks frantically. 'A real live, goddamn mutant.'

****

Rogue watches the car speed away. She wishes that she could have let the girl stick around longer. It's hard to disappear, especially when people need so much rescuing.

She can taste the bastard in the bathroom's nastiness in her. She spits and walks toward the Days Inn down the highway. It's getting dark.

****

Suzie stops abruptly on the I-5 causing angry honking. She pulls off at the next exit and then loops back through the dirt roads to the Shell Station. If the girl isn't there, hey, it's a small town.

****  
Rogue is lying in the bed she can't afford for more then one night. If she wants to keep going, she'll have to get a job in town tomorrow. She tries to think of what she could do.

There is a flurry of knocks on her door. What if it was Logan? Was he even looking for her?

_If he's not looking for you then why are you runnin' girl?_ that little voice in her head that sounds so much like her Mama whispers, teasing. She shoves the voice to the back of her mind.

She takes a deep breath and opens the door.

The girl from the gas station is standing there, her mascara streaked down her face. "Hey." She says, smiling as brightly as she can. "Do you need a place to stay?"


	2. The Other Woman

_A spring  
A pool among the rock  
If there were the sound of water only  
Not the cicada  
And dry grass singing  
But sound of water over rock_

T.S. Eliot _'The Waste Land'_

"You remember a few monthes back, when they had the mutant cure up in San Francisco?" Rogue looks at Suzie. They are driving back to Suzie's mother's. She nods, keeping her eyes ahead of her on the road. Her brown hair brushes against her shoulders as she bobs her head up and down.

"I took it."

Suzie looks at her. She's confused.

"But what about that fucker at the gas station?" Her voice breaks a little on 'fucker' but she doesn't start to cry again. She's being tough as she can be right now. 'I could learn a lot from her.' Rogue thinks, looking at her only friend.

"It wore off. Two monthes ago I could touch people without hurting them at all. Unless, ya know, I beat the hell outta them." She smiles at Suzie as they pull off of the highway.

"Now, my mom isn't used to strangers, but I'll just tell her that-" Suzie pauses, wondering what, exactly, _is_ her master plan? "I'll just tell her that you're a friend from out of town. She won't ask too many questions." She looks at her. "And you can tell her you're a mutant if you want to. She won't freak or anything." Rogue looks at her doubtfully, one eyebrow raised. She knows that this is a look that Logan used to give her all the time. She almost misses him again, but she doesn't feel too stupid or lonely and the feeling passes.

"You sure?"

"Hey," says Suzie as she gets out of the car. "This is California. We're laid back about shit like that, didn'tcha hear?"

****

The house is out in the hills. It's a squat little place, painted pink and with a tiny garden out front. The shades are open and Rogue can smell cooking from inside: oregano, tomatoes and pie. It reminds her of Mississipi without even looking like it. Suzie rummages around in her pocket for the key. The lock sticks for a second and then clicks. But when she tries to open it, the door is locked. "Dammit, I told her to start locking the damn door!" Suzie says, irritated.

They go inside and Rogue sets her bag down in the front hall. She looks into the rooms on either side of her. There's a couch and a television in one. A cat is laying on the carpet, exposing it's belly to the ceiling, waiting for somebody to come along and dote on her.

"Suzie, is that you?" A woman with bottle black hair and a slightly frilly apron peaks out of the kitchen. She is taken aback when she sees Rogue rather then her daughter. "Who are you?" She's definately startled, but settles when Suzie comes into view. "Mom, this is-" Suzie pauses for a moment, suddenly realizing that although this woman saved her life, she hasn't managed to get her name.

Rogue smiles at them. "Jean. My name is Jean."

****

He's been driving for weeks, stopping here and there, following her faint scent. She's left things to throw him off. Sometimes he wonders if he should even be looking for her at all. He was the reason she ran, is the reason she's still running. When he'd decided to leave to go get her back, he'd lied, saying he was going back to Canada, to try and start over. And he had gone back there, thinking that maybe she'd be where they met. It was a stupid idea. She wouldn't want to be anywhere that had anything to do with him. She must hate him.

He tried to remember her. He saw red hair and a smile instead. He remembers blood running down his arms, growing steadily colder. Like any of that mattered. At the end, she hadn't cared about him enough to stay, neither of them had. But he's still chasing after one and pining after the other. He speeds past the entrance to the 44 and Bakersfield, heading towards the Grapevine and Los Angeles.

He knows he's getting closer.


	3. Ruin

'_He said, I swear I can't bear to look at you.  
And no more can't I, I said, and think of poor Albert,  
He's been in the army four years, he wants a good time,  
And if you don't give it to him, there's others will, I said.  
Oh is there, she said. Something o' that, I said.  
Then I'll know who to thank, she said, and gave me a  
straight look._'  
-T.S. Eliot 'The Waste Land'

Rogue lay in bed; they had set up a cot for her in Suzie's room. At dinner, her mother, Gloria, was very nice and didn't ask too many questions about who she was or where she came from- she wasn't a stupid lady and obviously liked her. Every time either one of them said her name, she felt a thread of pain go through her.

_'What did you think dahlin girl?'_ her mother inquired in her head. _'That as soon as your name was Jean, you'd figure out how much he really loves you?'_

Rogue sighed and rolled over onto her side, thinking back on how she'd gotten here. _Like I could forget,_ she thought bitterly.

****

He'd come back and everything had changed; She'd been with Bobby, a great idea if she'd ever had one…like being with some guy was going to make her forget all the things she had rattling around inside of her head. Logan was always in there and she never really missed him and it wasn't like _that_ was ever going away.

And Jean.

How beautiful was Jean in his mind? Words couldn't describe it sometimes. Sometimes Rogue would be see her, when the light would be hitting her hair just right and threads of lust would string their way from her chest to her gut.

Then he'd come back and everything else was abandoned in her mind, and she wondered all the time if he ever thought about her like this. He'd look at her a certain way or say something and all of her hopes would rise.

Once Jean'd died, he'd gone strange. He started telling her all the time that he loved her and had figured that out now, with Jean gone. She was just a brightly colored distraction and Rogue'd wanted to believe him, wanted it more then anything else she could think of. But she remembered what it felt like looking at Jean and feeling what he felt. Bobby was sweet to her and had been there when Logan had been gone... she couldn't just throw him away on something she didn't completely believe.

Sure enough, when she'd come back, Logan had dropped everything (including her) to go after Jean.

After she'd died for a second time, Rogue had slept with him and didn't even have being drunk as an excuse. She'd come into his room and found him packing. "Runnin' again?" she'd said. She wanted him to be angry with her for what she did. For giving up on the fight, on the X-Men.

Instead, he'd grabbed her and said her name, kissing her hard. She'd pulled him down on top of her, thinking that this was it, what she'd always wanted. Except it wasn't. Because he didn't want her back.

When she'd woken up the next morning, she'd gone to her room and grabbed her bag. She hadn't unpacked it yet since she'd only been back for a few days. She stayed in Canada for a little while, but that hurt too much so she went to Louisiana, Texas, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado… But no matter where she went, she was always overshadowed by somebody who wasn't even alive anymore.

Logan pulled into a gas station off of the I-5 and walked into the shop, brightly lit with a fluorescent glow. The attendent was slumped over a desk, looking dead but snoring so loudly it would be impossible to mistake him for a corpse.

"Hey, bub!" He banged his fist on the bullet proof glass and the guy shook himself awake.

"What is it, man?" He was obviously pissed off.

Logan pressed a photo against the glass display case.. "You seen her?"

"No. Haven't seen anybody like her around here." The guy looked at him angrily. "I wanna get back to sleep it that's okay with you?" he said, mock-mannerly.

But Logan could smell her.

He walked back out to the truck he'd been driving for the last thousand miles or so, but he caught it again. Marie. He turned and followed the scent, pushing open the bathroom door. A big blond man lay on the floor, his eyes the size of dinner plates. No marks. No blood. She'd been here, and not that long ago.

"Hey, buddy!"

The gas station attendent looked at him sourly.

"There's a dead guy in the women's room. Thought you should know!" And with that, he got into his truck and gunned it.


	4. My Understanding of the Truth

is sunlight. The grass around her is wet. She expects to see Dick Casablancas standing over her, yelling back to his friends to look, look over here, look at the fucking junkie and hey whadayaknow it's Veronica Mars!

But instead it's a kind face that greets her, along with a familiar smell. "Lamb?" she smiles up at him. But it's not Lamb, it's Sacks, wearing that ludicrous cologne that seemed to permeate the whole station back before Lamb died. Sacks has one of the K-9 units with him, Lawrence. The dog sniffs at her stitched scalp and licks her face.

"Hey buddy," she says to the dog, smiling. It's amazing what twelve hours of sleep will do for your outlook on life. She smiles up at Sacks as well. "Hey there good-lookin. You look like you've never seen a girl sleeping in a park before."

"Veronica are you okay? " The look he gives her says exactly what he won't: why were you were dreaming about Lamb?

She reaches and he helps her up.

As they walk to the car, Veronica wishes Lamb were here. He would think this was funny.

***

Keith reads her the riot act. He's furious at her for disappearing. But Veronica doesn't try to explain away the dents in the car or the stitches or why she slept in Franklin Park. She looks for Lamb behind her fathers desk, the desk that used to be his. He's not there.

***

The diner isn't crowded. She sits in the middle booth. She watches the door. "Honey?" the waitress is waiting for her to order. "Short stack and an orange juice."

Lamb isn't here either.

She sips her orange juice and watches the door, waiting.

***  
Weevil has agreed to fix the dents in her car for less then the body shop would charge. She walks to the beach, taking her shoes off when they start to hurt. She won't find Lamb here and she's not looking. She just thinks about what's happened, knowing she'll never figure this mystery out. She picks up a rock to skip.

Then she sees it on her hand: "Madison is blonde."

She barely has time to register the car as it comes sailing towards her.

***

She wakes up, her head in Lilly's lap. "Oh Veronica Mars, you and your bad boys," she sighs dreamily. She's glowing. Lilly helps Veronica stand up. Lamb is standing next to her, dressed as the sheriff again. The hole in the back of his head is gone. He takes her hand quietly, neither of them acknowledging it.

"You were my unfinished buisness, the only person who missed me. I fucked you over when I should have helped you."

"So you crashed my car?" She rolls her eyes at him.

"Hey it's not my fault I'm this good looking. And that you drive the way that you look." He pauses for effect. "Like a bimbo."

Veronica clutches her chest. "Wow. Do you write your own material because that.....that was just amazing!"  
They're walking together. She stops for a minute and looks back at Lilly. "I thought this was supposed to be a happy ending."

He shrugs and looks at her.

"Close enough."

*****  
She's in the hospital, for the second time in two days. She looks at the date on her forms and she starts to cry for the first time in ernest. Keith is sitting in a chair reading a book. He gets up and holds her. "What is sweetie?"

"He's been dead for two weeks today."

Keith looks at her quizzically. "Who?"

"Lamb. I'm sorry, but I miss him and I know that I shouldn't and that he was a bad cop and a jerk, but he was good too and everyone is forgetting that, like it never happened. I'm sorry Dad!" She keeps crying, thinking of Lilly, fading away and Lamb, fading away like they never exsisted.

And Keith isn't mad at her, he tells her it's okay and that maybe, they can go to the funeral if she wants and meet his parents if she wants or not talk to anybody if that's what she needs. He understands why she misses him, he's known how she felt since before she did. She is, after all, his daughter. And now she can sleep, even when he's gone. Because she doesn't have to miss him all the time anymore, because Keith is missing him with her.

FIN


	5. Gone and Drowned

_There I saw one I knew, and stopped him crying 'Stetson!  
'You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!  
'That corpse you planted last year in your garden,  
'Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?  
'Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?  
'Oh keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men,  
'Or with nails he'll dig it up again  
'You hypocrite lecteur!-mon semblable,-mon frere!'_  
-T.S. Eliot 'The Waste Land'

She fought her first instinct to run. She had put so many miles between herself and his face that she almost felt like this was the only reasonable thing to do. That magical thinking which panic so often initiates was buzzing through her mind like so many mosquitoes. _If I run fast enough maybe I can make it to L.A./How in the hell did he find me?/ Where is far enough away, the moon?_ While all of this was going through her head, she was, for all intents and purposes, frozen.

"Marie." He said it like he expected her to disappear. He was starting to smile at her.

"You found me." It slipped out of her mouth before she could think about it. Suzie reached for her arm, pulling her closer. "Who is he? And what happened to 'Jean'?" This seemed to have been the wrong thing to say. It snapped Rogue out of her daze, infuriating her. Jean. It was always all about her wasn't it? Well, she was going to wipe that smile off of his face. What the hell had he been thinking, coming to get her, acting like she mattered to him?

"So what happened Logan? Jean didn't come back again so you decided to come and find me? Your side-bet?" she practically spat the last part. Suzie could practically hear the man's, Logan's, smile shatter on the concrete.

It was easier making him believe she didn't miss him then it ever was getting herself to believe it. It was stupider to. Like telling a thirsty man he didn't need a drink.

He didn't say anything, just continued to look at her. He was mad as hell that she would say something like that, even if it _was_ true. He'd pushed her aside, time and again for Jean, kissing her, holding her only when she was asleep and wouldn't know. He deserved this, even if it killed him to admit it. He clenched his fists, looking directly at his boots. It was like Jean had said the night before in his dream: he couldn't be lazy about this. It was important.

"That's what I am to you. The kid, always set aside for someone who doesn't even know you exsist, that you've got no chance with and then crawling back to me like it was nothing and telling me you love me when I know it isn't true and there's no _way_ I could possibly believe you. Then of course the icing on the cake is that you tell this other girl you love her and then once again when she's out of the picture, you sleep with me, just because she's not there to distract you anymore." She was practically crying at this point, holding almost nothing back, except what she had to, that one dark truth that she couldn't possibly let fly: that she had been in love with him and probably still was and that no amount of distance or horrible things between them would ever change it.

Suzie watched this all with wide eyes. As far as she was concerned, Jean or Marie or whoever, had every reason to be running away at this point. It seemed like she was playing second fiddle to a dead chick. Suzie thought about how much that would fry _her_ to have a guy do something like that and figured she'd probably have run away from him too. They were both quiet now.

Logan was staring at his shoes, clenching his fists. Rogue couldn't look at him, refusing to cry and looking even more miserable as a result. Everything stayed that way, until, slowly, Logan walked over to her, leaning in close, so close, to that deadly skin that he could feel the heat rising off it. He whispered in her ear and then Rogue really did start to cry, not sobbing, but scrunching up her face, the tears spilling out against her will.

"When I was sleeping, I dreamed about you," he whispered. "And everytime I woke up and you weren't there was a thousand times worse then losing Jean or not having her. That's _everytime_ I woke up, not just after she died." She smiled cynically, looking up at him.

"That doesn't make any sense. I was right there."

"I save your life and then I leave. When I come back, I figure you'll be old enough that I can...take you with me the next time I leave, if you catch my meaning but there's some guy. Some kid, who likes you and evidently you like him enough to forget about me and to be happy while I'm gone. And then you were practically gone." She just glares at him, not saying anything. She knows it's true. "And I want you to know one thing: I was never thinking about her when I was with you. You fixed whatever it was that she broke. You still do." He turns away from her, looking angry and sad at the same time. "That's enough emotional chow-chow for me. If you need me, I'm staying at the motel."He got back into his car and drove away.

Rogue got into the passenger side of the Jetta, curling slightly into the seat. Suzie, forgotten for the past few minutes, sat down in the driver's seat, turned on the car, and headed over to the oft-tourist-used drive thru, rather then going inside like she usually did. She ordered two huge milkshakes and fries. Lots of fries. This was the best she could do comfort wise. She was glad to see, as Marie chewed them furiously, that it was good enough.

The gas-station attendent, Lou, had called the CHP in Lake Castaic. The body he'd found in the women's had been a driver named Dwayne Hicks. It said so in his wallet. He had drooled over the cash in there for a little while, before he called the highway patrol. It might not be their jurisdiction, but a few twenties weren't worth the trouble if it was.

What had finally prompted him to call the CHP had been the downright creepy feeling he'd had looking at the body. He didn't know quite what it was that frightened him. He'd been in the Gulf and carnage didn't bother him the way it used to. For Christ sakes he'd seen men he'd known for years blown to bits. The longer he thought on it, the more it eluded him. It was only as he spoke to the officer on the phone that he realized what it was: the man had no marks on his body, there was no blood on him and yet the expression of shock and pain on his face were equal to that of a man being gutted with a Bowie knife. This was a metaphor he did not dwell long on, as it hadn't been one of the prouder moments in his life when he'd aquired a picture of what that specific expression looked like.

The man was about 24, so heart-attack and stroke could probably be ruled out...but hadn't there been a few odd looking folk through town lately? The man with the photo, who had pointed the body out to him in the first place. How had he known the body was in there? Or the girl in the photo? The one with the gloves who he'd convieniently forgotten earlier? Fugitives? Murderers? Maybe even, (a far-fetched thought even for Lou Sedaris, who'd seen every crime thriller or sci-fi picture ever to grace the theater up in Gorman) Mutants? Well, the CHP would have to just decide for themselves he wagered, finally taking two twenties out of Hicks' wallet.


	6. Wait For It

_After the frosty silence in the gardens  
After the agony in stony places  
The shouting and the crying  
Of thunder of spring over distand mountains  
He who was living is now dead  
We who were living are now dying  
With a little patience_  
-T.S. Eliot 'The Waste Land'

Back at Gloria's, Suzie had taken Rogue to her room. They sat now, on Suzie's bed, not saying anything. "So," Suzie said cautiously, "What are you going to do now?"

Rogue looked at her, smiling sadly. "I'm going to wait."

"Wait?"

"Yeah. I'm going to sit here with you and talk with you like everything's fine until I can't stand it anymore. Then I'm going to go find him."

"But why?" Suzie almost yelled. "You were so...you were fucking pissed at him. You still are! And now you're going to wait until you...I dunno...feel so goddamned compelled to get up and go to him that you have to?"

Rogue nodded slowly.

"Why the fuck would you do something like that?" Suzie was completely shocked. Right that second she would have given _anything_ to know what he'd said to her to get her like this.

"Because I love him. And even though that's the most ridiculous excuse, especially after him pushing me away and replacing me like he did, it's true. It was true in New York, it was true in Louisiana, and it's true now." The two of them sat there, silent again.

"So.." Suzie said again. "You wanna play cards while we wait?"

****

Lou was still waiting. He called the goddamned CHP hours ago and they still hadn't managed to show up. He was mad as hell and needed sleep. This was probably why he didn't notice the man walking around to the back of the building.

****

Logan was still kicking himself for telling the asshole attendant about the body. It had been completely stupid of him. He'd gone back to the Shell station and into the women's room, hoping that he was not too late.

He'd opened the door to find the guy still laying on his big stomach, like a beached whale in an orange t-shirt. He started to rip the guy apart.

When he was pretty much in a thousand pieces, Logan changed his shirt and cleaned up the blood on the walls and floor. He figured that the blood on his jeans would pass for motor oil and it wasn't like there was a lot of it. He went to the truck and grabbed a trash bag and stuffed all the bits and pieces of the Great Orange Whale into it. He threw it in the flat bed just as the CHP cars began to drive up. He ducked into the cab of the truck and then made like he was throwing away some junk. The big glasses he'd picked up somewhere in Texas masked most of his face anyway.

Back at the motel, he played solitaire and waited.

****  
Officer Derrick Brown listened very impatiently to Lou Sedaris. The man was a fruitcake, constantly making calls about zombies while drunk and Big Foot while stoned. Though he claimed he was totally sober, Lou was now making wild statements, saying that mutants had come through the station and killed the alleged victim. One of them had even told him that the body was in the bathroom. "And they both had crazy hair and if you need me to pick 'em out of a line-up, Derrick, I can do that as soon as-"

"Lou." Brown looked at him, irritation sketched into his face. He was not a very young man, Officer Derrick Brown, but at that moment he felt about a hundred years old. "There is no body in the women's room. There's nothing in there but a few toilets and a sink that smells like sick. Now, Lou," he said, beginning to get angry, "if you say that the body got up and walked off, I'm going to have to arrest you for being drunk in public or possibly abusing a controlled substance. And I don't want to do that. So why don't we leave and you go home and sleep it, whatever that may be, off."

Lou, who had only had a few beers, was absolutely furious. He loathed being known as a drunk even if it was true. He lunged at Brown who quickly had him down on the floor, being cuffed for assaulting an officer. He never saw Logan driving off with a suspiciously full trash bag, the big industrial kind.

****  
Rogue sighed. Suzie looked at her. "Am I giving you a ride anywhere?" Rogue smiled at her. "Yep. It's time for me to go." And that's when they heard the door open downstairs. Gloria shouted, "What the hell are yo-" They heard a smack and a thud. Suzie looked at Rogue and grabbed a baseball bat at the foot of her bed. Rogue tore off her gloves and coat.

"I told her to start locking the fucking door!" Suzie shouted as they ran out into the hallway.

****

Lou stood with a bottle in his hand, looking down at Gloria. He knew that the girl was staying here. The mutant. With Suzie and Gloria, the fucking slut and her fucking mother. He would find the girl and slit her throat. He'd had about one third of the bottle of tequila in his hand. He'd made bail right before it got dark and had arrived back in town at about eight. Trey, who worked at the McDonalds' had told him about Suzie (who he'd probably fucked) and her 'babelicious' new friend with the white streak in her hair.

He'd hit Gloria in the face with his bottle. She was half laying on the floor, blood coursing down the left side of her face. "See what you made me do? I spilled my booze." He laughed drunkenly at this, sounding like some horny teenager.

Suzie came running down the hall, bat held above her head. She was screaming in complete rage. She rushed at him and smacked him in the stomach and then the head, two smart licks, one right after the other. Lou dropped to the floor. He grabbed Suzie's ankle and pulled it out from under her. She fell on top of her mother, knocking the wind out of her.

"Bitch! That fucking hurt!" Lou shouted. Rogue slipped behind him silently. She deftly slid her hand under his scrawny chin. She grabbed his jaw and pulled the back of his neck against her face. His memories began to flood into her. They were lonely, fractured and disgusting. She shuddered in revulsion. She thought of Logan and how, once upon a time, when she was just a little girl really, he'd saved her. His memories were tied into her and this was where she went now.

She felt his desperation, heard his thoughts _please, please, please _when she'd been dead. She felt his stomach drop when he'd seen Bobby that first day. She saw him watching her at school, he wanted her to belong there. She knew that it was pointless waiting anymore or running anymore.

Suzie's hands were around her middle, pulling her away from the man, Lou. For one second, she was sure she wouldn't come unstuck. Then she was sprawled on the living room carpet on top of Suzie. "Oh my God, get off, you weigh a _ton_!" Suzie was, incredibly enough, laughing. "Jesus Christ! You need to cut back on the fries!" All three of them were laughing now.

"You better get out of here before the CHP shows up to arrest you for crossing state lines without a trucking liscense." Rogue got up. She was smiling. She looked at both of them. "Thank you."

"What for?" Gloria asked. "We can't possibly repay you for everything."

"Yeah, hero-chick." Suzie smirked at her. "Now get out of here. Don't you have somewhere to be?"

****

Logan had reached the conclusion that Marie might not be coming. He had played 234 games of solitaire and was probably going to shoot himself somewhere around 300 if she hadn't shown by then. There was a knock on the door.

"Housekeepin'." He sighed and opened the door. He'd hoped for a raw second that Marie would show.

And by some will of some God somewhere she had. Furthermore she was smiling at him, the kind of smile that said, 'Please, beg me to forgive you and maybe I will. But then again, maybe I won't.' It was going to be a long night.


	7. Water

_'You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;  
'They called me the hyacinth girl.'  
-Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,  
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not  
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither  
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,  
Looking into the heart of light, the silence._  
-T.S. Eliot "The Waste Land"

"So-"Logan was immediately cut off by Rogue grabbing his shirt, pulling him into a kiss. She held back as long as she could, feeling her power pulse under her skin, trying to break out and take hold of her again. _Concentrate..._ she thought, feeling that this was possibly the stupidest thing she'd ever thought and if not _the_ stupidest, at least in the top five. And then she lost her focus.

It was like he was getting pulled through her. She looked around the thoughts of her, looking for Jean, looking for all those things that had messed this up to begin with. She couldn't find them. All she could find was that same desperation running through his mind like water, afraid that she'd run off or die or simply fade away so that he could never get her back. She completely understood this feeling; it was how she always felt when she saw him with Jean.

And then it was just waiting.

Rogue was waiting to be pushed away and Logan was waiting for the life to be sucked out of him. But nothing happened.

She pulled away for a second looking up at him, confused. "Are you...dying yet?" He shook his head. "Not as far as I know."

She took of her gloves and looked down at her hands. She put her bare palm on his cheek. The sudden rush of connection was there, but otherwise nothing was happening.

"Now, you're _sure_ nothing is happening? You're not dying or maybe...do you feel faint?" He shook his head.

Rogue started to laugh. "You broke it! I was fine less then an hour ago and then you got your hands on me and-" At this point she was laughing so hard she was practically crying. It was as if nothing was fixed between them, at least not the way she'd expected it to be fixed anyway, but it didn't seem as important as before.

It was almost one o' clock in the morning when Ororo came down the stairs for tea. She hadn't been sleeping well the past few days and was starting to give up on having a normal sleep schedule. She wrapped her bathrobe more tightly around her. There were sounds outside. 'Probably just the wind,' she thought calmly.

She focused, reaching out to sense the winds circling the trees and slipping between the leaves. There were none. But she heard it again: a snapping noise, almost like something was-

Suddenly, the house seemed to light up as if it were the middle of the day. Students came rushing down the stairs. Ororo stood, shocked into paralysis, staring at the apparition in front of her.

It was Jean, glowing, fire which seemed to radiate from her in her hair, rippling off her skin. Everything seemed slow, as if they were all underwater. The students had fallen silent, the sight of what appeared to be the walking dead having cowed them almost completely.

She walked toward them, the fire undulating along her body. She reached out a hand to the woman who had been her best friend in a seperate lifetime.

"Logan," she whispered.

****

Sunlight crept across her face like a thief, silently and mischeiviously, stealing her sleep. She stirred, rolling over and reaching out. Her first foray brought her back a pillow which she threw over the edge of the bed. There was a slightly muffled grunt when it hit the floor. Or rather, when it hit who was lying on the floor.

"Logan?" she asked sleepily. "Why are you sleeping on the floor?"

"Because the floor doesn't have feet. Or elbows."

He'd apologized to her last night in his halting, shrugging way, the only way he knew how to apologize. It irritated her to think that he'd been alive for so damned long and still hadn't figured out how to handle things like that gracefully. It was also, she thought sometimes, rather charming.

And for some reason the big reunion scene wasn't a big as she thought it would be. She hadn't slept with him (_Again! _the persistant voice in her head had said, trying to pass for common sense again) but she knew she would.

Right this second, the hurt was too fresh, raw, not scabs or scars.

He rolled over on the floor to look up at her.

"You okay?"

She didn't say anything, distracted by the bruise blooming on his arm. A bruise? On Logan? It was impossible, but there it was, purple and black. Had she done that with her elbow? Had he fallen out of the bed?

"Kid?"

He was still looking at her, some worry in his face.

"I'm fine." She smiled at him. "And you have _got_ to stop calling me 'kid'. It's just creepy."

"Ah, you love it."

****

They were getting ready to leave. Logan stood at the counter, ringing the bell for the attendent. He couldn't wait to get out of his hell-hole of a town. In fact he couldn't wait to get Rogue out of this hell-hole of a town and take her somewhere nice. Somewhere she actually wanted to be. 'Which would be where exactly?' he thought. "Hey, kid!" he called back over his shoulder.

"Thought you were supposed to stop calling me that?" She walked over to him, holding out a styrofoam cup of the free coffee. He drank it and winced. He'd had worse, but this was up there.

"Where do ya wanna head to? We can go pretty much anywhere you want."

"Anywhere _I_ want? Didn't you have a past to chase or a girl to get or something?"

He half smiled at her. "Well, I got the girl didn't I? So now I'm just trying to focus on the future."

"What happened to the whole, wild, overly-masculine thing?" She teased him.

"What wild, overly-masculine thing?"

She laughed. "Do you really mean it?"

He shrugged.

"Can we go north? Along the coast to San Francisco, the long way?"

"Up Highway One?"

"Yeah."

"Sounds fine to me." He turned back to the counter and rang the bell again.

"And can we stop in Big Sur and pretend to be hippies?" He looked at her, complete disbelief on his face. But Rogue was trying to keep from laughing, her eyes shining. She had forgotton how easy it was just being with him.

He sighed. "Why the hell not?"

****

After Logan checked out (a process taking no longer then half an hour, after they waited for the clerk for close to twenty minutes; "What the hell is for you to be doing in this shitty town except for your job?" Logan had asked the man when he'd trundled in) they got into the truck. As he pulled out of the parking lot, he looked over at her. He was still trying to get used to her being there, rather then somewhere he couldn't get to.

He was looking at her when the semi came bounding up the highway. It's driver was doing thirty over the speed limit, hoping to make his destination early, delivering cheap cuts of meat to a store in Modesto. Logan never saw it coming, even when Marie screamed. As he turned his head, he wondered how it was that he'd gotten this lucky twice. And then everything was dark.


	8. Bruises

_'Who is the third who walks always beside you?  
When I cound, there are only you and I together  
But when I look ahead up the white road  
There is always another one walking beside you  
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded  
I do not know whether a man or a woman  
-But who is that on the other side of you?_  
-T.S. Eliot 'The Waste Land'

Ororo gripped the controls tightly. Jean sat next to her, in her customary place. There was no trace of the fire that had surrounded earlier, except for strange reflections in her eyes. She had hurried Ororo and Beast into the jet, giving no explanation as to where they were going or why she was so anxious to get to Logan. "There's no time," was her answer to any questions.

They were approaching the Nevada/California border. It was almost 6 o' clock in the morning PST. "Can't this thing go any faster?" Jean demanded. The fire in her eyes flickered out and the jets engines flared. "We're running late."

Ororo looked at her old friend. Her hands were covered in dirt. It matted her hair and clung to the black, torn dress she had been buried in. _Gods,_ she thought. _If Logan couldn't kill her, I don't know what will._

Jean looked at her, a dead look in her eyes. _You'll know soon..._

****

_Like little stars...winking at me..._

She opened her eyes. Her head had gone through the passenger side window. This should have decapitated her. Her leg was jammed against the door, which should have broken it. There were no scratches on her face or bruises or cuts anywhere on her body. She was in one piece after getting hit by an eighteen wheeler. _Untouchable._ she thought and laughed. She opened the door of the truck and staggered out. Little bits of glass littered the road, winking in the early morning sun, like little stars. She turned back, expecting to see Logan cracking his neck a few times while his face sewed itself back up.

But he was still in the car. He was crumpled in the driver's seat, completely limp. Rogue climbed back in the car, panic seizing her. "Logan! _LOGAN_!" She touched his shoulder and he opened his mouth. He gagged and blood spilled out of his mouth. She was achingly aware of the sound of it hitting the floormat and his jeans. It sounded like rain pattering on the hood of a raincoat. "K-kid?"

He turned his head very slowly to look at her. He was stuck from the neck down by the seat belt, which was pulled tight across his chest. His left eye had been replaced with a shard of glass. A huge bruise was blooming on his right cheek, like a sick reminder of what she'd seen that morning, a warning that she'd ignored.

"What happened?" She turned to see the truck driver, a fat, pale man who seemed jittery. Rogue climed out of the cab and stared at him. "I mean, that guy came out of nowhere and I was just trying to get to Modesto on time so I could-" She slammed her fist into his face. "Look at him you fuck! You did that!" She threw another punch that hit him in the gut. "You're jacked up on speed and trying to get to Modesto by what? Noon? So you can have forty bucks added to your paycheck this month?" She took off one of her gloves.

"Wait, lady!" the guy sobbed. Rogue grabbed the side of his face. He started to scream. She threw him to the ground. "That's why he's all fucked up and you're not! You're a fuckin mutie! A fuckin freak!" He tried to scramble away from her on his hands and knees but she kicked him in the face, breaking his nose. He fell back onto the road, unconscious.

Overhead, the wind began to blow violently. She looked up into the sky. The Blackbird was roaring down towards her.

****  
The steps lowered as soon as the landing gears hit the ground. Jean walked purposefully down them towards Rouge.

Her heart seemed to stop. "You're dead."

Jean looked at her. "Not right this second."

She walked toward the wreck and climbed into the truck. "Come here." Rogue hesitated, looking at her apprehensively. "I know you don't want him to die. I promise this is the last little cameo I'm going to make in this story. And then..." Jean looked away. "I'll be gone for good. Nothing to keep me here."

She looked at Rogue angrily. "Get over here right _now_!" She felt herself being dragged forward, her toes an inch off of the ground. Jean grabbed her bare hand. She reached out and took Logan's hand.

Rogue felt like she was being pulled out of her skin. She saw sparks flying in front of her eyes, a huge bird made of fire, and red, all encompassing red. As she passed through Jean's thoughts, one of them snagged onto her. It was despair. She saw Jean and Scott on their wedding day. Then she saw Jean tear him apart.

Jean didn't have anytime to care about Logan. She was completely lost to grief over what she had done. And now all she wanted was to die. Again.

And then it was over. Jean was gone and it was like she was never wind seemed to roar through the space she had occupied. Logan was breathing and his eye was growing back, slowly pushing the glass out of the socket. There was no blood foaming out of his mouth.

Rogue turned to look at a stunned Ororo. "Good to see you again. So..could you tell me what the hell just happened?"

****

They were back in Westchester. Beast had been looking both Rogue and Logan over for a few days. He was amazed by her ability to touch Logan and no one else without adverse effects except how it weakened Logan's abilities for extended periods of time.

Bobby had not wanted to see her. She didn't understand how he was still angry with her. Hadn't he and Kitty been going out for the past two months? She didn't think about it. Jubilee visited her frequently, gossiping as if Rogue had only been gone a few days. But mostly Rogue just stayed with Logan.

They'd talked about Jean's sudden reappearance and her even more sudden disappearance. Both of them had felt her guilt at her lack of control and despair at losing Scott. Neither of these things explained what had happened though.

It all came down to waiting again.

****

One day in late June, Beast came bursting into the med lab, where they had been sitting together. "I've found out why you can sustain physical contact with Logan!" They looked at him, waiting. "Well, aren't you going to congratulate me?"

"Oh for Christ's sake, Furball, just hurry up and tell us. Both of us have itchy feet and want to get the fuck out of here." Logan was irritated as hell. He'd been this close to finally getting the hell out of Dodge with Marie and finally shaking free of Jean and this place and he intended to stick to that plan.

Henry glared at him. "Fine. It would seem that Marie has absorbed enough of you that you are being incorported into her cells somehow, literally becoming a part of her. Her cells don't recognize yours as another person, however," he said, seeing Rogue's excited look, "she can only manage this with you, Logan, as your healing factor prevents her from doing too much damage."

"Is that all?" Logan asked impatiently. "Can we go now? We kinda have places to be."

"Just one more thing," Hank said irritably. "It seems our new resident telepath has deciphered Jean's purpose in reviving you. Apparently, she sensed Marie's terror at causing Logan to die and intervened. I know, it seems far-fetched," he said, seeing Logan's look of disbelief. "But after placing all of the mental fragments of her that the two of you carry, this is the only full explanation that has presented itself." Hank shrugged. "Hey, it could be weirder." He turned and left.

The two of them sat in silence for a while. Having been cut a big cosmic break, they were both kind of in shock.

"So..." Logan looked at Rogue. "You want to get the hell out of here, back to Plan A?"

She smiled at him. "I thought you'd never ask."


	9. Epilogue: In Paradisum

They sat on the roof, looking out at the endless gray in the mornings, wrapped up in blankets and each other. It was always cold in San Francisco. It was easy for them to disappear there; the city itself was freak, full of life and all the strange things and people that came with it. They hid together in the fog that came and wrapped itself around the spires of the Transamerica pyramid and the North Beach Tower. Almost no one knew them. It wasn't perfect.

They lived on Avenue D, in the Richmond above a Chinese restaurant. During the day, it did roaring business with college students and clucking old Chinese women. Their apartment always smelled like cooking meat and sesame oil, but the couple that owned it charged them next to nothing for rent and were always giving them food at a discount for fixing all the leaks and paint chips themselves.

On nights when either of them felt trapped by walls, they would go to the roof and feel the world expand, and the two of them with it. After doing this, neither of them would worry about waking up alone to find the other gone.

Sometimes they fought. She threw a plate at him once and it had shattered on his head, leaving him with a stunned expression on his face that made him look all of eleven years old. The gashes on his forehead had immediately begun to disappear, signaling to her that their argument should be likewise forgotten. She had started to laugh realizing how ridiculous it had been in the first place. He had stared at her for a moment, before he started to laugh too. They laughed so hard that they cried and cried so hard that they took their clothes off. .

They worked separately, hiding with others who wanted to stay invisible: illegal aliens, whole families of people struggling to look American when only the youngest could speak English, women who had escaped from violent men, who looked out windows and longed for freedom only to be chased back inside by their own shadows, men who never spoke to anyone, content to converse with hungry eyes that were ringed with violet and red instead. It wasn't perfect.

That day they sat and watched the light fade away, spiraling with pink and orange over a backdrop of blue and gold. It was clichéd and sappy, but neither of them cared. They'd been too jaded to care about clichés and who was watching. For once, all the little things were going right for them.

Rogue looked at Logan. "Are you glad we came here?"

He had his arm around her and was staring out to sea. He turned his face so it was resting on the top of her head. He mussed her hair slightly. She smiled at nobody in particular and thought how odd it was that this was where she had ended up: where Jean died, where the Cure had come from. Here, at the edge of the ocean, where, like everywhere else, it wasn't perfect.

"Yeah. Me too."

It wasn't perfect, but it was more then enough.


End file.
